


Bet your bottom dollar

by pillar_of_salt



Series: Hunger Games Prompts [2]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Career!Peeta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 19:10:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12918369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pillar_of_salt/pseuds/pillar_of_salt
Summary: Haymitch almost doesn’t remember the boy from District One who volunteers as tribute for the 74th Games.





	Bet your bottom dollar

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: A few years before the 74th Games, the Mellarks are reassigned to District One.

Haymitch almost doesn’t remember the boy from District One who volunteers as tribute for the 74th Games. On one hand, the half-empty bottle of mouth-scouring white liquor he’s nursing doesn’t really help matters; then again, the Careers are usually indistinguishable year after year anyway - Boy One all slick and swagger, Girl One golden-haired and delicately deadly; Boy Two a hulking juggernaut with anger issues; Girl Two smart and vicious. So Haymitch is 3/4 of the way to tipsy on an empty stomach at 8am, watching the required programming for government officials and Victors in Undersee’s living room until Effie drags him to the square for the Reaping, when the sonorous voice of District One’s escort breaks through the whiskey haze: “- _Mellark!_ ”

 

Reality wobbles, and for a moment, Haymitch looks around the classroom to see whether Bernt Mellark is about to get whooped again for not paying attention to History of Coal and staring at the apothecary's daughter. 

 

District One’s escort booms, “Ladies and gentleman, one more round of applause for this year’s volunteers: Glimmer Davis and Petrichor Mellark!”

 

“How lovely,” Effie sighs from an overstuffed loveseat. She passes the bowl of madeleines back to Haymitch, who takes one woodenly. “Cashmere and Gloss and Cecil will be absolutely drowning in calls from prospective sponsors this afternoon.”

 

Effie is subtle like firebomb and grating like the squeak of branches against glass; Haymitch just does what he always does, which is throw her his biggest shit-eating smile as he pours himself another thumb of the good stuff, chases it with orange juice that bursts sweet and stinging over his tongue.

 

“Well, sweetheart,” he slurs, “maybe they’ll be generous enough to toss some our way this year.”

 

“Don’t you care at all?” Effie snaps.

 

Haymitch frowns. “What?”

 

“Your image! My image!” Effie snatches the bowl of madeleines back and chews on one morosely. Probably imagining another year of getting passed over for a promotion, watching younger, shinier, bouncier escorts get assigned apprenticeships in the Career Districts. If someone told Effie to commit arson for a chance at a better District, Haymitch would be shocked if she didn’t salt and burn the whole Town to the ground. 

 

“I’m going to take a nap,” he announces suddenly. “Bit dizzy.”

 

“Oh, go ahead,” Effie says in despair, teetering off the couch in her jackknife heels to go…somewhere. “Just please try not to mess up your makeup at least.”

 

“No promises,” Haymitch says cheerfully.

 

He waits for her to go away, and then he turns back to the holo, where the youngest Mellark boy is smiling and smiling, waving pleasantly at the cheering, heaving crowd gathered in One’s town square. Haymitch tries to guess what his angle will be: cocky? charming? mysterious? No - there’s that bashful, self-deprecating smile from another lifetime, the boy the spitting image of his father. _Petrichor._ He’d bet his next year’s stipend that Dana Mellark had all their names changed to something ridiculous as soon as the ink was dry on the District transfer forms.

 

Haymitch briefly entertains the thought of whether she pressured the boy to enroll in One’s Career academy. Then again, he’s friends of a sort with Cashmere and Gloss, and he knows damn well no one gets picked to be a Career volunteer unless they want it. Easier to fumble your spear or drop your dumbbell when the recruiters come around. He notes compact, corded muscle now, the cruel tilt of that jawline, the flinty flash of resourcefulness beneath the boy’s thick flutter of blond lashes; makes a mental note to tell Twelve’s tributes to flee the Cornucopia especially hard this year before raising his empty shot glass in a toast. Petrichor Mellark, the baker’s son, is already fighting hard to win.

 

Haymitch supposes he must get it from his mother’s side.

 

*

 

Ah fuck, he thinks later that day, when Effie shrills out the first name she draws into the electrified air, it’s Garrett Everdeen’s girl. Girls, actually, once Katniss volunteers.


End file.
